Patricia Davids - A Matter of the Heart

“How does one decide that digging into other people’s lives makes a worthwhile second profession?”

“That was easy. I was sitting in a café in the busy capital of a small Middle Eastern country and relating the tale of how I met a pair of gunrunners to some friends. A man at the next table leaned over and asked me if I could help him get an interview with the unsavory duo. The guy turned out to be Derrick Mitchell, a senior reporter for Liberty and Justice . When my story panned out, he got promoted and asked me to come to work for him.”

“Just like that? You didn’t study journalism for years or work your way up from copy boy to the newsroom?”

Her sarcasm didn’t offend him. He rather enjoyed the way she lifted her chin and tried to talk down to him although she was a good four inches shorter than his six-foot frame. He sensed it was a ruse designed to put him off. It didn’t work.

“Nope. The job just fell into my lap. I believe the good Lord puts me where I am needed most.”

She looked down and smoothed the fabric she held with one hand. “Yes, I imagine you would have a simplistic outlook. I think a person should have to work hard to achieve what they want, otherwise it is meaningless.”

“You don’t believe that God led you to become a surgeon in Austin?”

She gave an emphatic shake of her head. “No. It took fifteen years of hard study, grueling clinical hours and painstaking attention to detail. I’ve earned my place here—it didn’t fall into my lap. God had nothing to do with it.”

Something about her answer intrigued him. At first he couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was, then he knew. Her vehement denial of God’s role in her life, like her sarcasm, didn’t ring true. There was more to this woman than she allowed others to see. His sudden intense urge to understand her better caught him off guard.

This was more than his usual need to find the story behind the person. He studied her face for a long moment, noticing her high cheekbones and full lips, the stubborn jut of her chin and the delicate winged brows above her expressive eyes. And then it hit him.

He expected annoyance, even arrogance from her, but what he saw in Nora’s eyes was infinite sadness—a longing for something precious that had been lost. In the war-torn countries where he had served he’d seen the same look all too often. It touched something deep inside him.

Gently, he said, “That doesn’t mean God didn’t lead you here. What made you stop believing?”

He watched the struggle on her face. For a second, it seemed as if he had connected with her, but the outer door opened and Carmen entered with a pair of scrubs over her arm.

The moment was lost and Nora turned away. Rob moved to take the scrubs from Carmen and offered his thanks. She nodded and left without speaking.

Nora closed the door of her closet. “I don’t have time to argue the existence of a higher power with you, Mr. Dale. I have rounds to make. If you’ll excuse me, I need to change. You may use the exam room through that door.”

Her cool tone conveyed in more than words that she was done talking to him. Rob touched one finger to his forehead in a brief salute and pulled open the door she indicated. As it closed behind him, he heard the lock click with a snap. Unbuttoning his shirt, he acknowledged that he’d uncovered more questions than answers in his brief time with Dr. Nora Blake.

He looked forward to the rest of the day with a growing sense of anticipation that he hadn’t experienced since he’d arrived back in the States. Dr. Nora Blake presented an intriguing puzzle—one he found himself eager to solve.

Nora walked to her chair and sank onto the familiar seat. A second later, she put her elbows on the desk and dropped her head into her hands.

Why now? Why after all these years? The pain of her past never truly went away, but there were days that she didn’t think about those difficult, sad hours and what she had lost. In the past year, there had even been times when she didn’t think about Bernard and the terrible debt she had to repay.

How ironic that the charity work she was doing to make amends was the very thing that might shine a spotlight on things best left hidden.

Looking up, she focused on Pamela’s picture. Her stepdaughter had endured enough pain in her life. Nora wasn’t about to let Rob Dale add to that burden.

He might appear cute and harmless, but so did a terrier puppy. It was only after one had turned your backyard into a crater-filled moonscape that you realized their true purpose. They had been bred to dig out vermin.

Rob Dale of Liberty and Justice struck her as the same kind of animal. He was no one’s lapdog.

She needed to steer him away from anything that involved her personal life. As a plan it wasn’t much, but it was all she had.

She rose and quickly changed out of her skirt and blouse and into her scrubs. She didn’t have any surgeries today, but she needed to follow up on three of her patients who were still in the hospital.

At the door leading out to the reception area, she paused with her hand on the knob. Letting Rob or anyone on the staff see her rattled would only undermine what she hoped to accomplish at Mercy Medical Center. When she felt she had control of her emotions, she exited the room with brisk strides. Rob, already changed, hastened to follow her.

“Where are we going?” he asked, working to tighten the drawstring on his scrub pants while he tried to keep pace with her.

“We are going to the PICU. That stands for Pediatric Intensive Care Unit. I have three patients there.”

“I thought we were going to surgery.”

“Not today, but I have an AV canal repair scheduled for the day after tomorrow.”

“AV canal. What kind of injury is that?” He finished cinching up his pants and pulled a small notebook from his breast pocket.

“An atrial ventricular canal is a congenital cardiac defect, as are the vast majority of the patients I see at this hospital. When I work at the base hospital, I do mostly follow-ups on adult patients after bypass surgery.”

They passed the elevators, but she didn’t stop. Instead, she pushed open the stairwell door and headed up. Two floors later she opened another door and strode out onto the pediatric floor. Unlike the rest of the hospital, the walls here were brightly colored and decorated with oversized cutouts of cartoon characters.

Rob noticed she didn’t seem winded by the rapid climb. “So you don’t get many injures like Ali’s?”

“To be perfectly honest, I have never seen a case like Ali’s and I’ve only read about a very few in the literature. Most of them were adults involved in motor vehicle accidents. The vast majority of people who sustain enough trauma to tear apart an internal structure of the heart don’t survive.

“The fact that Ali has is amazing. Two of the cases I studied healed on their own. Two required surgery to repair the tear when they began to show signs of fluid buildup in the lung. Three others died due to heart tissue death after approximately four days. However, Ali’s operation will be the same as for a simple VSD repair.”

“How can you operate on the kid if you haven’t had a case like this before? What’s a VSD?”

Nora paused outside a pair of wide double doors marked with PICU in large letters. “A VSD is a congenital cardiac defect.”

“You said that before.”

“And my answer was correct both times. We have several good handouts that we give to parents explaining the defects in detail and how they are repaired. I’ll make sure Carmen gets you some to study.”

“When do you see patients in your office?”

“Consults and a few follow-ups are scheduled once a week on Mondays. Ninety-five percent of my patients are direct admits to the PICU. Heart defects in children often go undetected until they are in crisis. Unless they have need of a second surgery in the future, I don’t normally see them after they leave the hospital.”